


Paper Plane

by MarauderCracker



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel 616
Genre: Best Friends Break-Ups Are Complicated, Gen, L.A. Woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 04:39:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5361710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarauderCracker/pseuds/MarauderCracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's twenty-one when she discovers that she's a shit writer. It's not due a lack of trying. There are apologies to be made and questions to be asked, things too important to fit in a text message. It's been three weeks since she left N.Y.C. (for the second time, for good) and she has to write a letter --she needs to write this letter-- and it's going to be the best damn letter ever written. Kate doesn't do anything half-way, not even letters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paper Plane

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the [Hypnotic Board](http://queerhawkeye.tumblr.com/post/133829159404/), for anonymous.

Kate was raised to know that she could excel. Her mother taught her to hold herself at a high regard, her father instilled in her a competitive fire. Her sister was her role model, the kind of person who always tries her best and --if her best isn't enough to make her  _the best_ \-- keeps trying. Kate tries, and she excels. She's the best.

She became the best cellist in the States by the time she was fifteen. At school she was always top of her class --in every class. She excels in martial arts, fencing and acrobatics. Every person whose opinion matters agrees that she is the best archer alive.

She's twenty-one when she discovers that she's a shit writer. It's not due a lack of trying. There are apologies to be made and questions to be asked, things too important to fit in a text message. It's been three weeks since she left N.Y.C. (for the second time, for good) and she has to write a letter --she  _needs_ to write  _this_ letter-- and it's going to be the best damn letter ever written. Kate doesn't do anything half-way, not even letters.

 

" _You're keeping the name and I'm keeping the name and maybe that means that we are not doomed. I half-expected you to drop it --go back to Ronin, become a shadow again, close that last door. Now I think that maybe_ you _want me to drop it... Do you think I'm too proud? Do you think I'm too stubborn? ~~What ruined us?~~_ "

 

She gets a job at a café, at first. It's cliche in a comfortable way --twenty-something no-longer-rich girl on the run, serving coffee by day and taking down bad guys by night-- and she likes it. The coffee is good, the costumers are a constant source of amusement, the pay is half-decent. She's quick and efficient, never spills a drink or burns the coffee, even makes little drawings on the foam sometimes. She's the best.

America shows up once a week, sometimes bringing souvenirs from other worlds, more often than not carrying New York bagels. They don't talk about New York, but the bagels aren't the same here. They sit in comfortable silence and watch the sun setting over the sea, and Kate thinks these are the best sunsets in the world.

 

" _When was the last time you walked on sand? Do you surf? I'm learning how to surf (I'm really good at it) and I think you would like it. Do you think Lucky misses the sea? I see people bringing their dogs down to the beach all the time. They look happy. (The dogs, I mean. Some of the people look happy, too, but I doubt they are. Are you happy?)_ "

 

A mid-summer night finds her sweating inside her suit and surrounded by fourteen guys, all of them armed. She's got three arrows left in her quiver, a bullet-wound on her left thigh and her goddamn phone screen is cracked. The bullet-wound hurts like a bitch, but the prospect of buying a new phone with her current budget hurts even more. The thought that she might die tonight --alone in an L.A. alley, that stupid letter unfinished-- hits her like a blow to the gut.

She sees one of the men raising his gun, aiming for her head. A roaring engine approaches. Kate starts lifting her hand, reaching for another arrow, even though she knows it's useless. Suddenly, a flare of light floods the alley. "Ea, tarados! Why don't y'all try to take on someone your size?"

The wave of heat hits her first --she's squinting in the yellow light, trying to make sense of what's going on. It takes Kate a few seconds to recognize the skull from police sketches and blurry cellphone pictures --the Ghost Rider kicks one of the dudes on the chest and elbows another in the nose, and only when the black holes that (he?) has for eyes focus on her does she react.

Her instinct kicks in before she can question if she wants to believe the newspapers' portrayal of the L.A. vigilante as a demon or the police's opinion of him as a delinquent. She grabs an arrow with swift fingers, sets her shoulders, shoots. One of the men --the one who was ready to put a bullet in her forehead-- falls to the floor screaming, and she hurries to pull the arrow out of his shoulder. He cries out again as she rips it out, and she kicks him in the face. "Watch out!" the Ghost Rider yells, and Kate turns just in time to hit another guy on the nose with her bow.

 

" _I met the new Ghost Rider. He's younger than me, still in high school. I worry about him. He's just a kid, barely eighteen and already carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders._

_Did you worry about me like this, back then? Did you look at me and saw a kid in over her head, trying to play superhero, too young to know the cost of this life we chose?_

_I thought I was going to die. Too many times I have thought I was going to die. ~~I don't wanna die without saying goodbye.~~_ "

 

She sits with Eli on her roof and watches the sunrise, and they talk about life. About his roommate at college, about her new job at the liquor store, about the choices they've made. Eli has always understood her better than anyone else. He's got the same drive, the same pride. "I want to go back," he says. "Sometimes I think about quitting," she confesses.

He doesn't go back --not just yet-- and she doesn't quit --not just yet-- but those truths lay heavy between them. Kate wonders if Eli feels as torn as her. If he's as hungry for the news headlines, the adrenaline rush of a good fight, the fulfillment that only changing the words hands-on can bring; as she is for long weekends in bed, blissful ignorance, vacations with her family, quiet nights. She laces her fingers with his, hopes someday they can truly be satisfied.

(Eli almost died once before. Kate doesn't forget it, doesn't forget that hospital room or her own half-assed prayers to a deity she's never believed in. Maybe that's what it'll take for her to quit: to look at death up close and realize being  _the best_ isn't worth it, realize this life isn't worth it. "There is no heroism in martyrdom, and yet..." he whispers.)

 

" _Bobbi told me once that you almost quit the superhero business. Both of you, I mean. That you could have had a happy, easy life. Kids. A house. But you didn't. You chose to jump off buildings, to be a hero. Do you regret that choice?_

_I find myself daydreaming about the life I could have had. I would have gone for a history mayor, maybe. It wouldn't have mattered, because I would have had a trust fund and a promising career as a cellist. I might have gone on tour, brought my sister along. Spent my summers in Europe. Read about you on the newspapers, joked about what it must be like to be a superhero. Maybe I could have fixed my relationship with my father --he'd take me to Japan to visit my mother's family, and we would hug like daughters and fathers do._

_He's got a price on my head. I guess you know, because he's got a price on yours too. You probably also know that, if my father kills you, I will have to kill him. I daydream about his death, too._ "

 

There is a dog that always shows up on her way to or from work. His left hind leg is bad, as if it had been broken and nobody bothered to take him to a vet, but he walks by her side when she's on foot and always tries to run after her when she's on her bicycle. She never gives him a name (because naming things is making them yours, and what's yours you can lose) but she starts keeping snacks in her pockets for him.

She likes the liquor store. The owner is an old woman who calls all regular costumers ' _motherfucker_ ' but calls Kate ' _sweetheart_ ', and feeds all the stray cats in the neighborhood even though Kate knows that the store doesn't really make money. 

Everything goes to shit --a breach between universes, America explains while Kate hurries to put on her suit and grab her gear-- and Kate's gone for almost three weeks. At her return, she finds the liquor store is now a hole in the ground --motherfucking aliens, the owner tells her while Kate helps her go through the rubbish-- and the dog she'd befriended is nowhere to be found. Her ex-boss insists she take one of the whiskey bottles that survived the attack, free of charge. "Good luck, sweetheart," she says, and shoves the too-expensive whiskey into Kate's arms.

She finds a new job, at a supermarket this time, and makes friends with a wandering cat that always shows up at her window. Cassie comes visit, and they drink whiskey straight out of the bottle, barefoot at the ocean's shore. "Tony Stark got my dad a bottle of this whiskey once. Told him it was the second best whiskey in the world," Cassie says, smiling. "It tastes like ass," Kate answers, and kicks sand in her friend's direction.  

 

" _I haven't gotten a new lead in months. Masque has gone underground, my dad is a ghost. I keep all my information on my bedroom wall (I got that from you). Pictures, news articles, numbers, names, police sketches. Nothing means anything anymore. I keep the articles about you in a drawer. At first I thought it was funny that the newspapers called you 'the New York Hawkeye', ~~but now I just miss you.~~_ "

 

There is probably more to their lives than the void where the other is missing. Kate knows this --she's a whole, entire person by herself; she can shoot her own arrows and tell her own stories. But she was better with him, and he was better with her, and too often she wishes they could just go back to that  _better_ version of themselves, to each other. 

The newspapers talk about her and Robbie ("L.A.'s own Hawkeye & Ghost Rider") as the best superhero duo this side of the country. S.H.I.E.L.D. asks for her collaboration in a couple missions, the local police begrudgingly accept her help after David and her take down a band of kidnappers in the area. But Kate still feels like she could be  _more_ , that she could be  _better_.

A mission with Romanoff in Washington has her thinking about improvement. She knows she's gotten tougher, quicker, smarter. Maria Hill herself told her that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been watching her and everyone in impressed with her progress. But Kate feels stuck.

"I know you don't want to talk about it, but..." Natasha lowers her sunglasses so Kate can know that she's looking her in the eyes. "He's doing better. Taking antidepressants. Working through his shit. He hasn't stopped missing you." Kate swallows down the knot in her throat, tries to find something to say to that. Then, their mark walks out of the house they've been watching and Kate can leave those thoughts for another moment.

 

" _Natasha called me last night. Intel says Masque and my dad are back in NYC. I subleased my apartment already, I'm taking a plane tonight. I both pray that I'll see you on the street and dread the possibility._ "

 

She breaks into an empty apartment in front of her father's building and sets her whole life there. Her whole life --a couple books, her gear, three changes of clothes, the information she's collected over the years. Everything else is still in L.A., waiting for her to come back. Kate doesn't want to die before turning twenty-four. She doesn't want to die by her father's hand. She doesn't want do die. 

She folds paper cranes out of photographs and newspaper cutouts, out of letters she never finished. She folds paper cranes during her stake-outs, the tiny birds falling from her agile fingers and piling up around her during twelve, fourteen long hours of looking at her father's offices and hoping for a sign that Romanoff's intel was right. She dumps them near her sleeping bag at the end of every day, counts them while she eats take-out, hopes that she'll get to the thousand before her dad finally shows up. 

She sees Masque through the window one day, just as beautiful as she remembers. Kate freezes in the spot, half expecting her to turn around and make eye contact with her, to whip out a gun and shoot her between the eyes. But Frost doesn't look at her --opens a safe, pulls out some papers, walks out of the office without even throwing a glance out of the window. Kate folds the thousandth paper crane.

 

" _I had this huge crush on you, back then. You were an idea, I guess. You were_ the best _, and I wanted to be_  with  _the best. You told me I was better than you, once, and the crush finally vanished. I think it was then that you became my best friend. I know how to get over a crush, but I don't know how to get over a best friend._ "

 

She tapes a dozen of strings to the walls of the apartment and slowly, methodically hangs the paper cranes. She tries not to think. She will have time to think later, if she makes it out alive. If she doesn't, it won't matter. She writers one last letter (no thinking, just let it out, it won't matter). Folds it into a paper plane and shoots it out of the window. 

 

" _You are one of the best things that ever happened to me. I'm tired of missing you._ "

 

He catches it.

**Author's Note:**

> Reblog on tumblr @[queerhawkeye](http://queerhawkeye.tumblr.com/post/134622128974/paper-plane-clintkate).


End file.
